{
  "id": "1507.06202",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2015-07-22T14:21:18.000Z",
  "updated": "2015-07-22T14:21:18.000Z",
  "title": "A Heuristic Approach to the Quantum Measurement Problem: How to Distinguish Particle Detectors from Ordinary Objects",
  "authors": [
    "R. Merlin"
  ],
  "comment": "14 pages, 2 figures",
  "categories": [
    "quant-ph"
  ],
  "abstract": "Elementary particle detectors fall broadly into only two classes: phase-transformation devices, such as the bubble chamber, and charge-transfer devices like the Geiger-Mueller tube. Quantum measurements are seen to involve transitions from a long-lived metastable state (e. g., superheated liquid or a gas of atoms between charged capacitor plates) to a thermodinamically stable condition. A detector is then a specially prepared object undergoing a metastable-to-stable transformation that is significantly enhanced by the presence of the measured particle, which behaves, in some sense, as the seed of a process of heterogeneous nucleation. Based on this understanding of the operation of a conventional detector, and using results of orthogonality-catastrophe theory, we argue that, in the thermodynamic limit, the pre-measurement Hamiltonian is not the same as that describing the detector during or after the interaction with a particle and, thus, that superpositions of pointer states (Schroedinger cats) are unphysical because their time evolution is ill defined. Examples of particle-induced changes in the Hamiltonian are also given for ordinary systems whose macroscopic parameters are susceptible to radiation damage, but are not modified by the interaction with a single particle.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2015-07-22T14:21:18.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "subjects": [
      "03.65.Ta",
      "05.30.-d"
    ],
    "keywords": [
      "quantum measurement problem",
      "distinguish particle detectors",
      "heuristic approach",
      "ordinary objects",
      "elementary particle detectors fall"
    ],
    "publication": {
      "doi": "10.1142/S021797921530011X",
      "journal": "International Journal of Modern Physics B",
      "year": 2015,
      "month": "Aug",
      "volume": 29,
      "number": 22,
      "pages": 1530011
    },
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 14,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable",
      "adsabs": "2015IJMPB..2930011M",
      "inspire": 1384338
    }
  }
}